DOMINANCE SET IN STONE
Day of glory for Irish as Penhill victory leaves Mullins ecstatic
AS THE equine warriors returned to the winner’s enclosure at the completion of the Stayers’ Hurdle yesterday, the atmosphere at Cheltenham was curiously subdued.
The applause for Penhill was polite, no more, even though he had just provided Willie Mullins with the Festival success which drew him level with Nicky Henderson on the 60-winner mark.
When there should have been fireworks in the Cotswold skies, instead there was a strange sense of restraint. It had been the same 40 minutes earlier when Balko Des Flos returned after the Ryanair Chase, a first win for Michael O’Leary in the race he has sponsored since 2005.
How had this mood come to pass on a card labelled St Patrick’s Thursday by the Jockey Club? Was it because Irish horses were winning race after race, and the home guard were simply becoming fed up?
Possibly. More likely, it was because the horses winning races were not the superstars. On a day which traditionally struggles to match the fireworks of Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, there were three hugely popular horses above the rest whom racegoers desperately wanted to cheer home, whether they’d backed them or not.
Two of them, Cue Card and Un De Sceaux, were in the Ryanair Chase, with Sam Spinner in the Stayers’. Cue Card is a light of former days and was sensibly pulled up early by Paddy Brennan while rust has crept into Mullins’ iron horse, who was outgunned by a younger hombre in Balko Des Flos.
For all that O’Leary, Henry de Bromhead and Davy Russell deserved the Ryanair spoils, had either Cue Card or Un De Sceaux returned in triumph, then hats and copies of the Racing Post would have been scattered skywards.
It was the same in the Stayers’, where Sam Spinner’s story was crying out for a fairytale end, but he folded while Supasundae’s efforts to complete a championship grand slam for Jessica Harrington fell at Penhill’s feet.
Not that Harrington was downbeat. ‘He was a better horse today than he was here last year. We’ve no complaints, he just didn’t quite stay in the ground, but he ran a brilliant race.’
The Penhill story was worthy as he hadn’t been seen on the racecourse for 11 months and Mullins was entitled to take the congratulations which flowed his way to mark a stunning training performance.
There were six Irish winners on the spin yesterday and a historic clean sweep was only prevented by half a length in the last race when Pat Kelly’s Mall Dini was denied in the Kim Muir, which brought wry cheers in the press room.
Even so, the score is 15-6 and Irish horses are on course to match, if not beat, last year’s record haul of 19 wins.
And were English-trained horses to sign off with a seven-race haul today, it still wouldn’t be enough to wrest back the BetBright Cup from ‘Team Ireland.’ Spearheading the challenge are Mullins and Elliott who have totted up 13 victories between them this week and have also had 12 horses either second or third.
Other than Nicky Henderson, who has chalked up two wins and four fourths, the home challenge has been invisible. Paul Nicholls? No wins. Philip Hobbs? No wins. Nigel Twiston-Davies? No wins. Alan King? No wins. This dominance may be healthy for the reputation of Irish trainers, but it is casting the English in a sickly light. As Irish horses cleaned up for the second day running, there were shades of a dominant GAA team taking their points at will against under-strength opponents.
One Irish trainer observed that six All-Ireland wins in a row for Kilkenny might be good for the Cats, but it’s not much use to anyone else. ‘We need competition, and we need the English horses to run better,’ he said.
While Mullins and Elliott have some duelling to do today for the top trainer’s award, in the owners’ category, the race is already over as Gigginstown House have five wins on the board, four more than anyone else.
The jockey honours lie between Russell (four wins), Jack Kennedy (three) and Paul Townend (two) – none of them have worn the coveted check armband leaving Cheltenham.
The scores on the board reflect the gradual shift in power over the past 10 years. When Mullins rocked up for the 2008 Festival, he trailed Henderson 31-10, but in the decade since he has chalked up 51 wins, compared to Henderson’s 29.
At his current strike rate of success, Mullins could hit the 100mark at the Festival by 2024, if not sooner. Mullins has upped his game, in part, thanks to the arrival of Elliott as a major player in the jumps game.
Elliott’s 209-1 treble yesterday lifted him to 20 winners since 2011. With the support of O’Leary’s Gigginstown House muscle, he is pushing himself and in turn he is pushing Mullins.
‘The Irish National Hunt game is flying at the moment. It just shows the job the HRI are doing with prize money in Ireland. We have lot of English owners in Ireland, it’s good for the game,’ said Mullins.
After racing last night, there was a sale of four and five-year-olds from the Irish Point-to-Point scene. The two top lots went for £330,000, one bought on behalf JP McManus, the other by Mags O’Toole, who buys a lot of horses for Gigginstown.
It was a sign of the times. The Irish have never had it so good at Cheltenham. Further dominance beckons.